The Day I Forgot About Spiritual Enlightenment

It was nine years since my "religious experience". In those nine years I had been consuming spiritual books one after another, watching Yogis and sages on YouTube, and I even attended a live recording of "Eckhart Tolle TV" in San Francisco in the Spring of 2012. All I wanted was another experience that was similar to the one I went through when I was 20 years old. In the meantime there was a movie I had watched several times and that was on my mind a lot. That movie was called "Into The Wild". I thought, "Hey, I liked the movie so much why don't I just buy the book. I took a few weeks off from the spiritual literature and read "Into The Wild" by Jon Krakauer. I loved it! Shortly after finishing the book. I packed up my belongings and headed west for a long road trip (inspired by the book's main character, Christopher McCandless). I spent most of the following year in Tucson Arizona. There, I met my best friend. Some time later, I made my way back to Illinois to live at my Dad's house again. There was a realization. When I gave up the spiritual search it opened up the potentialities of the Universe and I had the time of my life. This was when I forgot about enlightenment. The problem is with all the searching! And spiritual teachers advise us that at some point we have to give up the search. To seek is to struggle and Enlightenment is the end of all struggles. The search and the goal are a contradiction! Some say that the spiritual path is the suffering that leads to the end of suffering. This is true, but only to an extent. I am a firm believer in the Buddhist proverb, "When the student is ready the teacher will appear". I didn't seek to have a religious experience when I was 20 years old. The teaching literally was laid by my nightstand out of apparent random happenstance. I was ready for the teaching, so the teaching appeared! I was doing no seeking. Honestly, I feel as though all the searching I was doing in my 20's was one big waste of time. Oh, foolish me! rnUltimately, you cannot want enlightenment because it intrigues you, because it has that certain mystique. I was nearly obsessed with it as a 20-something. You have to want enlightenment because you truly do not want to suffer anymore. Then the teaching will appear. In the meantime, go out into the World and have some fun!